Answer:
they were underrepresented.
Explanation:
The importance of women in literature has to be studied from other angles, rather than the actual works published, because at that time there weren´t many educated women, and didn´t have a role in society which would allow them to actually write and publish something, so the actual defining thing would be that they were underrepresented, but still managed to publish some great works, like Incidents on the life of a slave girl, which is a great book that was written by a freed slave about her life.
